Page:HealtBeautyMadameCaplin - 66.png

66 growth, maturity and decline, has not yet learnt the first lesson upon which all success in her art must be based. At the particular period treated of in this chapter, the common sense of everyone will suggest that it is the weak and yielding parts that require support, and that this must be done in such a manner as to give elasticity to the envelope and ease to the wearer; and when this is perceived, it only requires sufficient mechanical genius to ensure an adaptation which shall preserve the figure and be conducive to the general health. Half an hour spent in our anatomical gallery will convince any lady or medical man, not only that all this can be, but that it is done by us every day, and that numbers treading the down-hill of life are grateful to us for the ease and comfort which we have been enabled to give them.

If we have been earnest in our condemnation of dressing in an unna­tural manner in the earlier periods of life, we would, if possible, lay a stronger emphasis upon our warning in middle age. At this time nature will have lost much of the vigour with which she repaired and renovated the system. The waist can no longer bear the cut­ting with strings and violent compression to which it is too often subject in the heyday of fashion. It is natural that ladies should desire to retain as long as possible the charm of beauty and the appearance of youth; but it should always be kept in mind that, to do this, Nature must be obeyed. Art may, and often does aid her, but nothing can ever compensate for the native vigour of the system when unimpaired by disease, and free from the oppression of fashion and habit.

At this period, no lady who values her health, comfort, and appear­ance, will be without our abdominal supporter.

It is well known to physiologists, that the loss which females sustain at what is called the turn of life is amply compensated for in another direction. The reason why the constitution assumes a new character is because there is an increase of blood thrown into the system; and if the organic laws have not been violated, there is an absolute gain of physical power when the transcient disturbances to which she has hitherto been subject have ceased; it is at this time also that the mental powers acquire their most substantial solidity. During the early part of life there was little or no difference in the strength of constitution afforded to the two sexes; but if the health of the female has been